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The trip to Hartberg ended bitterly for Austria
© WHAT
The trip to Hartberg ended bitterly again for Austria. The Viennese have not won for two years in eastern Styria, they played their European Cup qualification at TSV in July and also suffered a deserved defeat on Saturday. As Hartberg celebrated the first Bundesliga win of the season with a 2-1 win thanks to a Dario Tadic brace, Austria missed a chance to establish themselves in the upper half of the table.
Austria coach Peter Stöger was upset by the missed opportunity in the table, as well as long periods of disappointing performance. “The first half hour was very, very poor,” he said in the interview with Sky. “If you go in like this and give up half an hour, you may not have deserved to take more than a loss,” said Stöger.
His team did not have a significant chance at this stage and fell 0: 1 behind after a Tadic Abstaubertor (10th). Tadic made up for Benedikt Pichler’s equalizer (34th) with a dream goal (47th). Austria then had some chances to score points, but Hartberg deserved to win. “We were already going in a direction where we didn’t always find the best solution in terms of football, but there was always the feeling that the team is active and doing everything,” explained Stöger, who this time missed these virtues, especially at the beginning.
Austria is therefore only in sixth place, right inside the championship group standings that the Viennese missed last year. He absolutely wants to avoid that this year, a victory would have brought a good point cushion. “We would have had the opportunity to establish ourselves,” says Stöger. “There are two reasons: we are not that far away or we are not good enough. It means accepting the situation and living with the fact that you will be on the sinister line every week if you are not consistent in your performance,” he is stressed.
Players were also upset by the performance. “It wasn’t enough in all respects,” Pichler said. “We had a good upward trend in the last games, I can’t explain it to myself. Everyone has seen that it is not enough to play with 80 or 90 percent, regardless of who,” said the scorer.
On Hartberger’s side, on the other hand, the relief after the first win of the season, the first home win of the calendar year and the exit from last place in the table was great. “I’ve seen a lot of positives. We are on the right track, but we have to keep working hard to get where we would like to go,” said coach Markus Schopp.
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